Who would want to be a millionaire when you could be a Happiness Engineer? If you know me at all, you know I love my job. A lot of you have asked how you can work here, too, or whether there’s a college class you can take. Here’s my answer:

Happiness Engineers need intuition, critical thinking, a sense of community, a dose of creativity, and some solid self-discipline. Above all, they need the ability to communicate effectively.

They also need to know WordPress!

So if you want to learn WordPress.com well enough to apply, while demonstrating those qualities we seek, here are a few things you can try:

1. Go to http://learn.wordpress.com and spend some time working through those steps. Then start writing. Write the things you care about; write responses to Plinky. But write about your WordPress experience, too. What’s working for you? What doesn’t, and how do you work through it?

2. Go to http://en.support.wordpress.com . Do a little exploring; try some new things. Be creative. Demonstrate that intuition. And again, if you find something that doesn’t work as you expect it to, how do you go about finding solutions?

3. Connect with other WordPress.com users. If you’ve followed through the learn.wordpress.com tutorials, you’re already doing this to some extent. What questions do other users have? How would you answer them?

Then apply early, and apply often. If at first you don’t succeed but you still want to be an Automattician, find that room for improvement, then try again. I did, and I wouldn’t do it any other way.